Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut

"Great game, crap port....."

Okay, heres a bit of a hitory lesson, the original Sonic Adventure was release late in the year 1999. The title was pushed so it could be released with the new Sega console, Dreamcast. The game ran fairly smoothly, was very enjoyable and well done. It had many forgivable problem given the circumstances wich led to a score i would have given an 7.5.

Allright, its the year 2003, 4 years have passed and Sega decided they wanted to get more cash off this old title. Now, ResidentEvil was released in 1996, and they remade it with new technology, MetalGearSolid was released only a year before SoniAdventure, and they have decided to remake it. Why did Sega decide to merly port this title. It is almost as insluting as the ResidentEvil 2&3 ports!

Lets start off with the problems of SA:DX, the most obvious being the framerate. The original ran at a fairly consistant 30 fps. This new one's will run randomly between 60-24fps. There is slowdown were there wasn't slowdown before, and although the game is still playable, it looks really bad.

How about the endless glitches from the original? Well there still there, actually i came across many more in this version. In fact, the only one removed was the cool one that allowed you to enter different levels with other characters (DAMN). You can easily fall thru the floor to your doom, get stuck in a wall, lodged onto wierd objects not being able to jump, slowly slide across perfectly level and flat sufaces when not moving, it can be really bad. Once the game completly locked up on me, with a frozen screen making a buzzing sound, i was in complete shock!

Oh, we can't forget the camera can we? Its possibly the worst 3D camera ever. It will get stuck into walls, lost in space and sometimes get lodged in your forehead. I one level, you have to ride a stone snake for transportation, and the camera actually directs you away from where you need to go and you have to fight it with the shoulder buttons. Well, they did add c-stick camera movent, but 1/2 assed. You have to change it in the menu every time the game loads (not every time you start up), but every time you go to one area to another, you got to change it yourself. I don't understand, in the DC ver you used the d-pad to look about, why didnt they keep that and the c-stick? Oh yeah, that would take more than 5 minutes to program.

What did they do better? Allright, they touched up the character models signicantly, but there are still many rough edges and still look ackward. They added a pointless mission mode that involves picking up a stature 3 feet away and putting him were you got the clue...and your reward....heh, yeah right. Oh yeah, there are the GameGear games, as if running a 4 year DC game port wasn't enough of a waste of your GameCube's power....oh yeah, they also have slowdown.

One thing they did do right was add the chao garden from SA2B, well done, no complaints here. Actually i really like this because all the work you put into your chao in SA2B can be brough into this game to save you a lot of trouble and time!

Let me just finish off the list of stuff i wasn't happy with. Levels didnt see much of an improvent (new water is all along with a few changed textures). Animations are just as horrible, they didnt improve them at all as they promised. The loading between cut-scenes is awful and distracting.

What they needed to is get a new QA, fix up the camera and bugs, clean up the animations, add a story selection of kinds, throw in more than one reward for those emblems. I guess the GG games are okay (fix the slowdown in those at least). Come on secret costumes or something, something making the game worth playing 100%.

Now the scores...
PRESENTATION 3/10
They changed the title screen, after that its the same old simple menues.

GRAPHICS 4/10
Nearly unimproved, the new character models and water effect are nice, but everything is unchanged (to the circle for a shadow). Some of the best textures ever seen get used improperly on crappy modling.

SOUND 9/10
Okay, props to Sonic Team to getting a good band together for the game. Since music is based on opinion...i really liked it, thus the score. The sound FX are old school and fit in.

GAMEPLAY 5/10
Glitchy, horrid camera, repetitve levels among characters (theres actually only about 9 or 10 reused among the 6 characters). Some of the levels designs are the coolest ive ever seen, its a shame the framrate, glitches and camera wont let us play them the way they were meant to be.

LASTING APPEAL 3/10
6 different perspectives on a wonderful story. One of them is long, 2 are a decent length, the other 3 are incredibly short. You get an awsome ending if you beat them all, but the missions and emblems are simply not worth completing (unless you love GameGear).

OVERALL 4/10
Its obvious SonicTeam didnt try. They had PSO3, Sonic Heroes and Billy hatcher in the works when the ported this, its obivous they it lacked attention. Its sad when you can tell a game was released blatantly to make money, right down to the self advertisements. Yeah, they have Sonc X, Sonic Advance 2 and Pinball Party adds posted around the adventure field, makes me sick.

If you love Sonic game and have not played the original, buy this. If you loved the original and want to play it again and KNOW you love the GG games, buy it as well. Everyone else, you should really rent this 1st!

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/03, Updated 06/23/03